Garrett’s plan was suicide, and I told him so, repeatedly and volubly. He was annoyingly calm and complacent though. In fact, the more agitated I grew, the calmer he seemed to get.

Finally, he shrugged his shoulder and said, “Well then, we can give it up. Go back to toiling, and hope the world survives for the next however many thousands of years.”

“I can’t,” I said. “If we don’t get the Chuckster back to stop the Sorcerer, there’ll be no world left.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Kaej. Sorcerer or no sorcerer, neither of us are getting anywhere without the cloak. You don’t want to get the cloak. So you tell me, what’s the plan?”

I turned over everything we knew over and over. Garrett had done his homework. He had maps and plans and inside knowledge. He’d talked to inmates of the Sector who had been on the construction detail for the vault, and others who worked the maintenance detail. He’d spoken to the craftsmen who serviced the automatons and turrets, and somehow – he didn’t tell me how – gotten a peak in the foyer.

In fact, he’d done everything short of casing the joint.

But it didn’t change the risks.

Finally, I said, “I need to find one of the gates.”

He laughed. “Sure, I’ll show you. On one condition.”

I didn’t like his tone, so I asked warily, “What’s that?”

“I get to watch when you try to cross over.”

“There has to be a way.”

“There is. The cloak.”

“Another way.”

“There is. Serving your sentence. Happy toiling!”

“Dammit, Garrett, this is serious.”

“Look, I can’t just pull a solution out of thin air for you. I know you like to think you can always cheat the system, always find a way. But sometimes, you got to face reality, Kaej. Even you.”

“Reality is, your plan sucks.”

“Okay. So what’s a better one?”

Round and round we went, exhausting every possible option, until my stomach growled with hunger.

Which brought up an interesting point. “Kharon said we didn’t need food.”

“We don’t.”

“I’m starving.”

“Oh. You get used to that.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Used to it? You mean…?”

“Hunger is one of the incentives to ascend. Clever bastards, in their own way, I guess.”

“But Kharon said –”

“Yes, and he’s right. You don’t ‘need’ food. You won’t starve without it. You’ll just feel like you’re starving.”

A terrible thought struck me. “You mean…you’ve been here, feeling like you’re starving, all this time?”

He nodded. “The thirst is worse. But, at least it rains from time to time, and you can collect water.”

“This is hell,” I said. “What kind of sick bastard thinks of a place like this?”

“The kind of sick bastard who is terrified of dying.”

I frowned at that. “Dying? But, I thought this place was run by gods or whatever?”

Garrett snorted. “Don’t you believe it. It’s sorcery, pure and simple. Some kind of necromancy, if I’m not very much mistaken.”

“And – how do you know?”

“I can feel it, for starters.”

“Oh.” Aside from everything else, Garrett was a reasonably skilled mage. Something I had as of yet barely touched – and then, only managed to singe myself or passersby in the process.

“And, I’ve done some digging. But, none of that really matters right now. What matters is getting out.”

He wasn’t wrong, so I pushed curiosity aside. “I don’t think I can go without eating for years.”

“Yeah, you can take it from me, it’s no fun. And – there’s no ale, either.”

Stolen story; please report.

I groaned aloud. “Wine?”

“Nope.”

“Moonshine?”

“I have no idea what that is, but unless it’s rainwater or ditch water, also nope.”

“Fine,” I said resignedly. “We’ll try your plan. To paraphrase something from my home world…better dead than unfed.”

He just shook his head at me.

Half an hour later, I’d scrubbed the puke out of Garrett’s floors. He refused to budge otherwise, or give me back my items. As it was, he’d handed over everything but the sword. When I objected, he pointed out that I wouldn’t need the blade until we found the king. “And I might.”

Now, we were winding our way through gray, ash-covered streets, past gray, ash-covered shacks.

They looked like they’d been put together by methed out Fallout raiders – little bits of debris, cobbled together in imaginative ways. They’d be winning no awards for either aesthetics or design. But they seemed to be holding together.

Until the next stiff breeze passed anyway.

Finally, Garrett pointed to a tall gray rectangle against the gray sky. Like everything else, it too was covered in ash.

“Let me guess. The Hall of Holy Relics,” I said.

“Always knew you were a sharp one.”

I ignored his sarcasm, and paused to survey the building. It looked like something out of the Soviet Union: tall, austere, unwelcoming concrete.

“Charming.”

“Most of it is empty,” he said.

I frowned at that. The thing must have been twenty stories tall at least. “But why –”

“Is it so tall if it’s empty? Because they don’t plan to keep it empty forever.”

“You mean, they’re what? Looking for more artifacts?”

“Not looking for. Building. Come on, Kaej. Use your head. Why do you think they’ve got so many toilers?”

I stared at him. “You mean…” I paused. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

“It’s a con. A scam. They capture everyone who dies, and put us to work, building them a paradise. Didn’t your Kharon tell you that most people who cross over end up here?”

“Well yeah, but…who the hell is ‘they’?” A zap answered my cursing, this time straight through my back where I had the scepter strapped down under my cloak.

“‘They’ are the people who built this place.”

“Which are…who? The gods?”

Garrett snorted. “Gods. Don’t be ridiculous. The gods don’t condemn people to damnation or toil. That takes a human mind.”

“Hold on, hold on. You’re saying humans built this place?”

“Look, Kaej, there’s a lot going on here that you don’t know about.”

“So enlighten me.”

“We don’t have that much time.”

“Then give me the short version.”

He sighed. “Fine. This Sorcerer, or Necromancer, or whatever you want to call him. What do you know about him?”

“Uh. He wants me dead?”

“Smart man. What else?”

“Not much. I mean, he’s invading the Realm. Killing a bunch of people.”

“Why?”

I blinked at the question, and I answered a bit incredulously as it seemed obvious to me. “He’s a bad guy.”

Garrett made a disgusted face. “Every time I think you’ve started to use your brain for something other than propping the sides of your skull up, you go and open your mouth.”

“Okay, so maybe he’s got some kind of reason besides being evil.”

“Of course he does.”

“Which is?”

“This place.”

I was more confused than ever. “Hold on, hold on, hold on. You’re telling me, the Necromancer is invading the Realm, and it has something to do with the afterlife?”

He nodded. “He’s the reason this afterlife exists. Him, and King Leopold.”

“Leopold…as in, Chucky’s father?”

He nodded again. “There’s a long history there. But the short version is, neither Leopold nor the Sorcerer wanted to die, and neither of them wanted to give up their power when they did die. So they decided to hijack the afterlife.

“Turn it into their own kind of paradise. Where they ruled and the peasants went on toiling for them for eternity.”

Old me, the me who had lived on Earth, would have found this all too farfetched. But the me who had traveled realms, died, and undied was a little more openminded. Still, openminded and comprehending weren’t always the same thing.

“Okay. So…we’re in Leopold’s paradise?”

“Not exactly. Look, there’s a lot to it, but short version is, Leopold screwed the gods. Ouch.” He jumped as if stung, then glanced around, looking for someone.

“It’s the sword,” I told him. “Same with the scepter. If you swear, they’ll hurt you.”

Garrett grunted. “Peculiar.”

I gestured impatiently, prompting, “Leopold scr…stuck it to the gods.”

“He got the Sorcerer to tap into the magic of the afterlife. Essentially, to hijack it. But they couldn’t do it on their own. Not even the Sorcerer was that powerful. It requires a constant, unbroken stream of magical energy. And whatever else he might be, the Sorcerer is mortal. He needs to sleep sometime.

“So they introduced the AI.”

“AI,” I said. “Kharon?”

He shook his head. “Not Kharon. Kharon’s just a helper bot. These are the AI overlords. They run the afterlife. They generate the magic it needs, they reshape it as they need. And they keep bringing souls in, to work for them. To create the artifacts, help generate the magic. Anything and everything they need.”

“A captive slave army.”

“An ever-replenishing slave army.”

“So that’s why the Sorcerer is attacking the Realm? To fill the afterlife?”

Garrett shook his head again. “No. Once they put the AI in place, and Leopold got what he wanted, he double-crossed the Sorcerer. Cut him out of the picture altogether. Kings tend not to like to share.”

“So he attacked the Realm,” I said, “and is building his own undead army, from Leopold’s people.”

“Exactly.”

“So Leopold is behind everything, or responsible anyway.”

“Yes. But what’s funny is, you say he’s dead. Yet I have heard nothing about his arrival.”

“Would you expect to? It’s not like we’re in the Ascended realm.”

“But this place was built to serve him, forever. No king in the history of kings has considered himself above the adulation of his peasants and slaves.”

Which was a fair point. Still, of all the confusing shit he’d just thrown at me, this seemed pretty minor. “Well, who knows with kings,” I said vaguely.

My mind was focused on another, far more serious point. If Chucky boy’s dad was the reason for this whole shebang, would breaking him out of eternal lockup solve anything?

Part of me thought not. Apples not falling far from trees, and all that. Not a comprehensive argument, perhaps, but in the first haze of fury, it was all I came up with.

As I thought things through, though, I wasn’t so sure. Even if Chucky boy was, to borrow another cliché, a chip off the old block, it didn’t mean that he’d sit idly by and let the Necromancer wipe out his kingdom.

I didn’t delude myself that he was any kind of noble king looking out for the little guy. But it’s hard to be king without a kingdom.

And a kingdom of one wasn’t much fun.

No. Old Chuck would fight the Necromancer, whatever else he did. And if the priests were right, he was the only one who could fight him, and win.

So whatever else I did afterwards – and I would do something. There was no way in hell I’d spend thousands of years toiling for some dead guy – I still needed to break Chucky out of his dad’s little paradise.